We've had some great presentations throughout the semester on various tech tools that we could incorporate in the classroom for different purposes, and the presentation on Prezi was no exception. However, unlike all the other tools, I came in with a solid familiarity of how Prezi works and what it is used for, and I also came in with my personal disposition towards the tool, and I'll admit it wasn't a very positive one. In my experiences throughout high school and undergrad, Prezi was used from time to time by my peers or by teachers in presenting material to a class. In pretty much all those cases, the application was used just to put a little more flash in the presentation as opposed to powerpoint, through fancy transitions and more intricate themes.
So with that in mind, I felt that Prezi is really not innovative in any way, and that it is useless in my book. Luckily, I have a cohort of open-minded and critically thinking classmates that help push my thinking about things further and open my eyes to new opportunities. Both the presentation as well as the discussions that resulted from the presentation led me to new findings about the tool, and how I can manipulate it to support my instruction. One of the main focuses was on the ability to zoom in/out from a panel into a different one, and the meaning I as an instructor can attach to that move within the presentation. It could help to further the attempt at deep analysis of a topic such as a historical event, or the development of a character in a story. Looking at various layers of the event, the feature could help support students in analyzing what is going on in the story, or what was a cause of real life event.
While I still don't see Prezi as a main source of presentations in my teaching, I think through these revelations about how it could be helpful, I'll consider it more as an option for specific lessons, or at least I'll investigate it further on my own to see if it's something I want to use.
I also find myself somewhat unsure of what to make of Prezi. The idea of using the transitions to illustrate connections between ideas seems really great; I'm just not sure that students would be able to interpret these transitions in the way we would hope. I remember first encountering Prezi in the Intro to International Studies class I took a few years ago, which I found frustratingly dry and lacking. While watching the professor's presentations, I would find myself concentrating more on the transition movements of the Prezi than on the content on the slides. Thus, I found Prezi distracting from my learning rather than aiding it.
ReplyDeleteWhile I acknowledge that we all aim to sustain the interest of all of our students through creative and engaging lessons, there will always be students who for whatever reason, be it the circumstances of their life or their own cognitive preferences, do not find our content area engaging. I'd hate for my choice in presentation tool to encourage these students to be more wrapped up in visual effects than in content.